Chapter 1 - Page 2

or passage apply on board!"

Think of going on board a coppered and copper-fastened brig, and taking
passage for Bremen! And who could be going to Bremen? No one but
foreigners, doubtless; men of dark complexions and jet-black whiskers,
who talked French.

"Coenties Slip."

Plenty more brigs and any quantity of ships must be lying there.
Coenties Slip must be somewhere near ranges of grim-looking warehouses,
with rusty iron doors and shutters, and tiled roofs; and old anchors and
chain-cable piled on the walk. Old-fashioned coffeehouses, also, much
abound in that neighborhood, with sunburnt sea-captains going in and
out, smoking cigars, and talking about Havanna, London, and Calcutta.

All these my imaginations were wonderfully assisted by certain shadowy
reminiscences of wharves, and warehouses, and shipping, with which a
residence in a seaport during early childhood had supplied me.

Particularly, I remembered standing with my father on the wharf when a
large ship was getting under way, and rounding the head of the pier. I
remembered the yo heave ho! of the sailors, as they just showed their
woolen caps above the high bulwarks. I remembered how I thought of their
crossing the great ocean; and that that very ship, and those very
sailors, so near to me then, would after a time be actually in Europe.

Added to these reminiscences my father, now dead, had several times
crossed the Atlantic on business affairs, for he had been an importer in
Broad-street. And of winter evenings in New York, by the well-remembered
sea-coal fire in old Greenwich-street, he used to tell my brother and me
of the monstrous waves at sea, mountain high; of the masts bending like
twigs; and all about Havre, and Liverpool, and about going up into the
ball of St. Paul's in London. Indeed, during my early life, most of my
thoughts of the sea were connected with the land; but with fine old
lands, full of mossy cathedrals and churches, and long, narrow, crooked
streets without sidewalks, and lined with strange houses. And especially
I tried hard to think how such places must look of rainy days and
Saturday afternoons; and whether indeed they did have rainy days and
Saturdays there, just as we did here; and whether the boys went to
school there, and studied geography, and wore their shirt collars turned
over, and tied with a black ribbon; and whether their papas allowed them
to wear boots, instead of shoes, which I so much disliked, for boots
looked so manly.

As I grew older my thoughts took a larger flight, and I frequently fell
into long reveries about distant voyages and travels, and thought how
fine it would be, to be able to talk about remote and barbarous
countries; with what reverence